Women's Votes Lifted Obama

COMMENTARY

In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney sharpened their focus on female voters, and for good reason — women played an enormously important role in the outcome.

There are two reasons for this: turnout and the gender gap. Although 51 percent of the population is female, women account for 53 percent of the electorate, leaving men as only 47 percent of all voters. Interestingly, this is a turnaround for women; for decades after gaining the right to vote, women turned out to vote at lower rates than men. Only in the past few elections has women's turnout exceeded that of men.

As a consequence, both Romney and Obama sought women's votes. Yet, using recent history as a guide, the advantage would go to Obama. All Romney could hope to do was reduce Obama's advantage. That is because in presidential elections since 1980, women have consistently voted more Democratic than men. They did not always give the majority of their votes to the Democratic candidate. In the 1980s, women voted Republican, but to a considerably lesser extent than men. For the past 20 years, however, majorities of women voted for the Democratic presidential candidate.

This year was no exception. Exit polls show that 55 percent of women voted for Obama, compared with 45 percent of men, resulting in a gender gap of 10 percentage points. This difference between men and women is larger than in any election except 1996, when the gap was 11 percentage points, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Yet women are hardly monolithic in their views or their voting. Romney drew the votes of the majority of married women, 53 percent of whom supported him. By contrast, unmarried women were among Obama's strongest supporters: 67 percent voted for him. Even among African Americans, Obama's strongest supporters, a gender gap appeared — 96 percent of women voted for Obama, compared with 87 percent of men. A similar gap existed between Hispanic men and women.

Although Republicans expected that the economic difficulties experienced by so many Americans over the past four years would help Romney to reduce, if not eliminate, the gender gap, it was not to be. Women — especially non-white and unmarried women — are more likely to favor the policies espoused by Democrats. And with women also more likely to turn out to vote, this group proved to be a central part of Obama's winning coalition.